


mahogany

by yehetno



Category: ASTRO (Band)
Genre: "the closet", Cadence - Freeform, First Love, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Repetition, Self Acceptance, and you better like it, i do mean things to grammar, i like metaphors in case you didn't know, sort of a fic but not really, technically no dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 21:01:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11768304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yehetno/pseuds/yehetno
Summary: Of course, it had to happen in the summer.





	mahogany

**Author's Note:**

> the title is in reference to a line from 'fired up!' because i kinda love that movie, and for whatever reason, it had a really profound moment about being closeted.
> 
> the grammar is... not always correct because that is my stylistic flavor for this fic-esque thingy. this is mostly a fic testing out the cadence of this style...
> 
> i don't know, enjoy? (but also, there are likely typos or missed words, so i'm sorry about that.)

His first kiss happens in the summer.

Of course, it had to be summer. Magic always seems to be in the air during summer. Maybe it’s in the air all the time, but summer and its accompanying humidity condense the magic and make it cling sweaty bodies. Summer is the time when magic infects people, seeping in through the skin and saturating their lungs. Memories of summer are left with an effervescent, warm sort of glow.

Summer is the season of mistakes. Summer has its own category of lost lovers. Summer _changes_ people; the heat compounds things and pushes them forward. Summer is the season of action.

His first kiss happens to the soundtrack of rain and thunder booming in the background.

Like some unrealistic romantic comedy, his first kiss is dripping wet, water beading on warm skin, soaking into clothing and hair. They are outside but not quite in the pouring rain, taking partial shelter under trees. The rain droplets that fall are so much fatter than the ones hitting ground beyond the tree line.

He has goose bumps, but he doesn’t know if it’s from the kiss or chills setting in from wearing wet clothes. Maybe it’s the sound of a crack of lightning reverberating through his body. He’ll never know because all of those feelings happen at once, coinciding so perfectly that they are indistinguishable from each other.

His first kiss happens with a boy.

Lee Dongmin.

Dongmin is just so _pretty._ He is the kind of pretty that makes it difficult to suppress thoughts, the kind of thoughts that turn cheeks scarlet and require a quick apology to the heavens. He’s almost pretty enough that anyone can acknowledge his beauty without ramifications. And Dongmin has been the subject of many a daydream. Really, the best way to describe Dongmin is as the ocean slowly washing away the erected barriers around his heart.

Bin is unprepared, surprised even. Dongmin’s expression turns on a dime, going from embarrassed and perhaps worried to intense and wonderstruck. Like he has never seen Bin before. Like Bin is the only thing he can see. It is a moment that he couldn’t even dream of happening before it did. Especially since he didn’t want to think about it. Well, he wanted to think about it, but fear does ugly things. Fear whispers a million what-ifs into Bin’s ear, day-in and day-out, pushing him away from hope with the horrific image of a mangled heart too broken to repair. Fear keeps Bin on the safe side of the door, discouraging him from indulging the impulse to peek through the crack to see what lies on the other side. 

Bin’s first kiss belongs to Lee Dongmin, and every minute detail and feeling is catalogued by his nerves and senses. The bark of the tree feels rough against his back, especially through his damp shirt. His body is cold except for the parts that Dongmin is touching. His lips are so warm that the heat colors his cheeks pink. His hands grip Dongmin’s biceps, still in place from trying to pull Dongmin away from the rain. His hips are on fire from where Dongmin’s hands have found their place. The sound of rain splattering against the canopy feels like it is miles away because kissing Dongmin is an all-consuming sort of feeling.

The kiss is so soft, so tentative, so _innocent_. The inexperience of the moment is lost beneath the slow tendrils of love wrapping around his heart and squeezing. The giddiness is undercut somewhat by the raw fear that weighs down Bin’s stomach.

He doesn’t get to keep this moment, doesn’t get to cherish it. It will be robbed of him, one way or another. Some girl with long hair and doe eyes will claim the spot of his first kiss when he talks about it.   He won’t walk home, hand in hand with Dongmin, cheeks flush with the feeling of young love, giggling about the future of their relationship regardless of how long it might actually last. Bin knows, _he just knows_ , that he’ll be avoidant in the weeks to come, and Dongmin won’t come find him and force him to look him in the eye.   There won’t be a quiet plea in the music room for Bin to just _talk_ to him with an instance that he knows Bin feels it too. 

When Dongmin’s soft, pink lips finally peel away, Bin lets go of a little piece of his heart. Dongmin might not notice it, but Bin will know that it belongs to him. 

They stare at each other, but Bin only knows which wheels are turning in his own head. All that he can see of Dongmin is that set of beautiful brown eyes. Dongmin presses his lips together into a hard line and takes a big step back. 

Bin pushes himself off of the tree and exhales audibly.

His first kiss dies without a word. It gets placed into a small box and pushed to the very back of his mind where the rest of his crushes and feelings stay. 

He and Dongmin do not talk about it.

It may as well not have happened.

The kiss, in fact, has an adverse effect on their relationship. Bin can’t stand to be in a room with Dongmin and not be allowed to think about him. And Bin is not allowed to think about him, no matter how much he wants to. His lungs are stuck back in that summer moment, breath bated, waiting and wondering what will come next. That feeling seeps into all of his memories of Dongmin, reinterpreting moments passed to figure out if his feelings exist in a vacuum. 

Bin does think about him though. Thinks about holding his hand, kissing him all over, twirling his hair between his fingers. In some beautiful alternative universe, Bin thinks that he and Dongmin could be. Somewhere, out there, there exists a Bin that slow dances with Dongmin in the kitchen without any music playing. There exists a Bin and Dongmin who can hold hands and walk down the street without catching a hostile stare. 

So, eventually, Bin and Dongmin don’t talk at all.

They still pass each other in the halls and offer a look of recognition. Sometimes Bin almost thinks he sees a smile tug at the corner of Dongmin’s lips. It pulls Bin back to that summer afternoon when he was brave enough to speak to Dongmin, when he thought Dongmin didn’t notice how he stared. A bitter sweetness clings to those memories, his heart, _his soul_ aches to be near Dongmin again. However, it is just another friendship claimed by unrequited love of the most insufferable kind.

Bin has his second first kiss with a girl named Sun. She has long hair and big doe eyes. Her lip-gloss sticks to Bin’s lips as they kiss. Bin still imagines Dongmin anyway. Their friends talk about how their names in English makes them the moon and the sun, which is an endless source of amusement for them.   They go on a few dates, but Bin knows his heart isn’t in it.

 She’s not right for him.

 She’s not a boy.

 More importantly, she’s not Dongmin.

It is a lie to say that Bin doesn’t notice when Dongmin leaves. Because he does. It makes him cry, quietly into his pillow in the middle of the afternoon. A much larger part of his heart than he realized had been given to Dongmin.

Bin graduates high school and goes on to college.

College changes Bin. Well, no, _Myungjun_ changes him. Myungjun is perhaps the polar opposite of Bin; he is considerably shorter, has a sharp wit, and possesses an undue amount of confidence. Almost everything he says has a playful lilt to it, especially when he’s criticizing something. Bin supposes he needs to have something to undercut how harsh he can be. Most importantly, Myungjun is unapologetically Myungjun.

And Myungjun is, in no uncertain terms, head over heels in love with Park Jinwoo.

It stuns Bin that someone could be so open about… _that_ when the social consequences have the potential to be so high. Bin can hardly admit to himself that he isn’t straight, but Myungjun casually mentions that his boyfriend is doing such-and-such this weekend, therefore, he simply can’t grab dinner. They give Bin a sense of something akin to hope. As far as he can tell, they are happy and Myungjun has a great relationship with his parents. 

Myungjun is the first person that Bin comes out to, and when all is said and done, Bin is crying and letting himself be hugged and shushed by Myungjun. Myungjun says he’s proud of Bin as he strokes Bin’s hair. He says that he will _always_ be there for Bin, and if his parents can’t accept him, he shouldn’t worry because he still has family right there. 

When he comes out to his parents, it hurts.

His mom looks at him with such _disappointment_ in her eyes, which cuts even deeper than the vague disdain written across his father’s face. To be honest, he cannot bring himself to hear the words that his mother says to him. The tone is one of concern, and there is a sense that Bin’s mother believes she can fix whatever is wrong with Bin. His father doesn’t say much of anything. There are no affirmations of love or acceptance, and it tears at Bin’s heart because, in this instance, his fears were proven correct. 

When Bin graduates, he moves all of his things into a tiny apartment in Seoul with the expectation that he and his family will rarely see each other. He lives a few buildings over from Myungjun and Jinwoo as well as a short subway ride away from his job.

After a while, Bin feels normal. He has friends and a steady job. There is a sort of liberty that comes with accepting himself after so many years of denying it, even if it comes at the expense of his relationship with his parents.

Winter is when Bin meets Dongmin again.

Well, no, that’s when Bin collides into Dongmin at an ice-skating rink. Christmas music drifts through the moment over decades old speakers as the other patrons of the rink glide past. Bin is so busy apologizing and trying to roll away from this person who has body slammed that he doesn’t notice it is Dongmin until Dongmin says Bin’s name.

Dongmin hasn’t changed much. He has lost the last bits of baby fat clinging to his face. His nose is red, cheeks and lips chapped from the cold winter wind. Bin helps him to his feet and mumbles something about not recognizing him despite the inaccuracy of it all.

Dongmin laughs, and not for a second has Bin forgotten what a gift Dongmin’s laugh is. Or the beauty of his smile. Or the mere warmth of his presence.

Dongmin melts away the ice of winter and the years of separation, and it is as though they’re teenagers again.

In the mess of it all, they manage to exchange numbers and promise to catch up and all of the things that people do when they run into friends from high school. Bin doesn’t actually expect Dongmin to call him or send him sweet text messages.

He doesn’t expect coffee to turn into dinner or dinner to turn into multiple dinners. He doesn’t expect texts to turn into calls or that those calls could last for hours, all the way through the night and into the next morning. He doesn’t expect a drunk call on a Tuesday night with Dongmin rambling on and on about how _in love_ with Bin he was and, quite frankly, still is.

On Wednesday morning, when Dongmin meets up with Bin for coffee in a sly attempt to figure out if he said anything “wrong” or “inappropriate” on the phone last night, Bin kisses Dongmin.

Dongmin has never been pinker as he lets out a soft “oh”.

There are days, months, and _years_ behind that “oh”. A million emotions and thoughts that have come and gone. Everything between this kiss and the first one washes away as though the universe hit the reset button.

Bin can do things right this time.

 

 

 

Someday, in the far off future, Bin will wake up in Dongmin’s arms, drag his nose across Dongmin’s collarbone, and exhale a sigh of contentment. His thoughts will be a puddle of mish-mashed words and raw emotions that do not equate to much of anything. The only thing that he will feel is warmth, from the body next to him, from the heat trapped under the covers, from the love that reaches all the way to his toes.

Bin will be happy to live in the very universe that he does because he does not need to pine and ponder about futures unknown because the present suits his liking as it is.

**Author's Note:**

> tangentially related to [**curiosity killed the cat**](http://yehetno.tumblr.com/post/161972544922/curiosity-killed-the-cat)
> 
> soap is not my favorite thing to write, but the other fic i am trying to work on is being uncooperative so... here we are. also, what is with me and talking about the universe in this manner???
> 
> kudos/bookmark/comment (pls).
> 
> thanks for reading!


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